Displaying posts published in

2016

Germany fears ISIS may have infiltrated its army BY Lisa Daftari

Senior officials in Germany’s army have called for background checks on all new recruits after discovering that dozens of soldiers with links to jihadi groups have enlisted in the country’s armed forces.

More than 60 recruits with Islamist links have already been exposed as Bundeswehr officials hastily proposed a draft amendment calling for new screening process to eliminate potential Islamist recruits as well as right and left-wing extremists, according to the Sunday’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Military leaders are warning that infiltration means jihadists can quickly acquire both military skills and weapons training that can then be used to carry out attacks either inside Germany or abroad.

Under new fast-tracked proposals, army officials want pre-screening of new recruits ahead of acceptance into the country’s armed forces.

More than 800 Islamists, many of them German citizens, have left the country to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, as the country struggles with a growing radicalization problem.

Of those who have left to go fight alongside ISIS, more than 120 have been killed and over 200 have returned, according to Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

Additionally, at least 29 ISIS recruits have previously served in the German army, according to an internal military reportreleased in April.

Currently, only soldiers serving with Germany’s armed forces are monitored for signs of radicalization, but new laws call for another 90 officers who will carry out more than 20,000 checks on new recruits at an estimated cost of more than $9 million.

Germany is presently on a high state of alert following a series of deadly attacks last month linked to the Islamic State.

The Israeli Civil War ****

According to an old Israeli anecdote, Charles de Gaulle once complained to David Ben-Gurion, over a glass of (kosher) cognac: ‘Although I am Monsieur le Président, I have to deal with the Prime Minister, and he’s such a potz! You are sooo lucky, Davíd: your Président is just a figurehead; as the Prime Minister, you have all the power…’ ‘Oh, you have no idea!’ said Ben-Gurion with much chagrin. ‘You see, I have to deal with Jews in Israel. That’s currently two and a half million aspiring Prime Ministers and each thinks he can do a better job than I do…’

There are now almost 7 million aspiring Prime Ministers in Israel and about the same number in the Diaspora. And while every Jew thinks s/he can be Prime Minister, some act as if they already are.

Those who closely follow Israeli politics should be familiar with the phenomenon of high-level retired security and military personnel (sometimes even still-serving high-level security/military personnel!) making controversial public statements on political issues. Such statements, often quoted out of context and sometimes creatively ‘interpreted’, invariably cause embarrassment to the country’s political leadership.

The case of the so-called ‘Gatekeepers’ (former chiefs of the ‘Shin-Bet’ Internal Security Service who went public with their own analyses of the situation – mostly critical of Israel’s political leaders) is very well-known – not in the least because they are often cited, both by Israel’s sworn enemies and by various ‘concerned friends’.

What contributes to this situation is the fact that, in Israel, retired security and military ‘celebrities’ very often aspire to (and quite often achieve) top political positions. Out of the six ‘Gatekeepers’, four have been involved in politics after retirement; a fifth (Yuval Diskin) flirted with politics for a couple of years, before deciding to remain just a commentator – at least for the time being; the sixth ‘Gatekeeper’ (Avraham Shalom) is the only one who could never enter politics: hehad to resign from the Service, after allegedly ordering the summary execution of two captured Palestinian terrorists – and thus becoming a political ‘hot potato’.

Given Israel’s fully proportional election system, anyone aspiring to climb the ladder in politics must achieve national (rather than local) recognition. This is particularly important for security chiefs who – until not so long ago – operated mostly in the shadows, away from the public eye. And the sure-fire way to quickly achieve national (and also international) recognition is… to make controversial statements, of the kind that garner media attention and stir the interest of an already jaded public, one that is bombarded with ‘news’ umpteen times a day. Combine that with the Israeli/Jewish penchant for wild exaggeration and bombastic communication (traits that anyone familiar with the country and its people is well aware of) and you’ve got an explosive mixture – at least from a media point of view; a perpetual generator of cheap journalistic ‘scoops’.

The latest such scoop concerns one Tamir Pardo, former head of the Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations). His potential political ambitions are, for the moment at least, unclear. But it’s very early in the day: Mr. Pardo retired from the Institute only in June 2016.

A public speech Pardo made a few days ago contained some controversial remarks. Controversial enough, it seems, to attract the attention of Israeli media and – as always – of various interested parties outside Israel.

The Iranian Press-TV, for instance, stated with some glee:

“Israel heads toward civil war: Ex-spy boss”

The ‘forever-worried-over-Israeli-policies’ US Jewish organisation J-Street lamented:

“Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said that the biggest threat to Israel’s security is the conflict with the Palestinians and not Iran’s nuclear program.”

So what did Tamir Pardo actually say?

Another Labor Day in the era of low labor participation By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Buckle your seat belts because President Obama’s approval ratings are actually over 50%. I’d love to ask those people a simple question: Do you follow the news?

How does he do it? I guess a little help from a “blind love” media is probably behind that.

The latest jobs reads a lot like the last jobs report. This is from CNBC:

In addition to the below-expectation number, wage growth actually took a step back, with hourly earnings up just 3 cents and an annualized pace of 2.4 percent. The average work week declined 0.1 percent to 34.3 hours.

That was largely because the biggest jobs gains came in bars and restaurants, which added 34,000 positions.

Social assistance grew by 22,000, professional and business services added 22,000 and Wall Street-related positions grew by 15,000. Health care also contributed 14,000.

Let’s hear it for the bars and restaurants. I hear that they are doing quite well around Wrigley Field or wherever the Cubs go for a series these days.

On a more serious note, high paying jobs, such as in manufacturing or construction were reduced a bit. More bad news: hours worked the lowest since 2011.

FBI’s 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal By Jonathan F. Keiler

The biggest and most damning takeaway from Hillary Clinton’s July interview with the FBI, at least as it concerns the FBI itself and by extension the rectitude of our government, is, to borrow from Arthur Conan Doyle, the dog that didn’t bark. That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.

Clinton’s lawyers deliberately withheld these emails from the public and forced the FBI to recover them. They clearly demonstrate Clinton’s motive in setting up the server, thereby intentionally endangering the classified material that she and her cohorts knew would inevitably be sent through it. This motive and intent is further demonstrated by Clinton’s obfuscations, lies, and destruction of evidence that followed in the course of over a year.

FBI agents never inquired about any of it during the interview. Since they are presumably well trained and experienced investigators (including a section chief), the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that they were deliberately tasked with not pursuing this obvious line of inquiry, as it would have undermined the narrative that Director James Comey intended to deliver to the nation a few days later – that Hillary should not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence of intent.

The FBI’s investigatory reports covering Hillary Clinton’s July interview (cynically released just before Labor Day) confirm suppositions of FBI critics that the interview was mostly a farce, and show Hillary mostly restating her standard defenses to complacent and compliant agents who never pushed her or her phalanx of attorneys for more. Indeed, the documents show Hillary accompanied by a gaggle of lawyers that rival O.J.’s (David Kendall, Catherine Turner, Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and evidently an attorney who shall not be named). Even O.J. did not have a secret lawyer. Getting much of anything done in such an environment would have been a challenge. But then again, the lines of inquiry were almost certainly vetted with Clinton’s lawyers in advance (let’s not forget the “coincidental” meeting on an Arizona tarmac between Bill and Loretta Lynch the week previous), producing a kind of legal kabuki dance designed to get Hillary in and out unscathed.

Although the FBI reports do not contain an actual transcript, a careful reading and a bit of experience clearly demonstrate what happened in that conference room. The FBI agents dutifully presented Hillary with various problematic classified emails and asked her for comment. Hillary’s comments generally took the form of “I don’t recall” or “I trusted State Department professionals.” She claimed ignorance of classification categories and procedures, denying at one point that she even received instruction about them, although she signed a document upon taking office certifying that she had. Not to mention she was the head of an important government agency and ultimately responsible for its security. She blamed her accidental fall in 2012 for some of the memory loss, otherwise just using the standard excuse of the white-collar criminal of ordinary forgetfulness of detail by a busy executive.

At no time is there any indication that the agents pressed her, nor did they seek at any time an admission from her of anything other than ignorance, inadvertence, or negligent conduct. This Hillary supplied in droves, with the connivance of both her attorneys and the agents, as apparently all concerned knew at the time that Directory Comey had already decided that Hillary’s violations of statutory provisions covering negligent conduct were not actionable.

The closest the agents came to seeking an admission of any kind was a single follow-up question on p. 9, part 2 of the Form 302. That occurred after Hillary explained rather incredibly that “she did not pay attention to the ‘level’ of classified information and took all classified information seriously.” An agent asked “whether Clinton believed information should be classified if its unauthorized release would cause damage to national security[,]” and “she responded, ‘yes that is the understanding.'”

Clinton’s Excuses Fall Outside the Realm of Plausible Deniability By Frank Salvato

The credibility of our government has been marginalized, and increasingly so for decades. The agenda-driven politicization of departments and agencies – government entities that are supposed to serve the people – has facilitated an all-encompassing bureaucracy loyal to elitist politicians over the American people. This corrupt, special interest-serving politicization has exploded in the almost eight-years of the Obama Administration.

In an unbelievable explanation covered by the Washington Examiner, Hillary Clinton testified under sworn deposition to FBI agents that she believed the classified “C” markings on emails recovered from her private emails were there as a way to alphabetically order paragraphs. This information comes from an 11-page summary of the deposition, alongside 58 pages of notes from the FBI investigation into her illegal use of a private email server and email accounts.

“When asked what the parenthetical ‘C’ meant before a paragraph…Clinton stated she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order,” the FBI cited from notes created taken during its interview with her.

The interviewing agent’s notes stated that Clinton swore she had a “limited understanding” of the document classification process; of how and why certain documents are deemed classified. They also revealed that Clinton “couldn’t recall” ever being trained on how to handle sensitive material.

The new information also evidenced that Clinton testified to FBI investigators approximately three dozen times that she “couldn’t recall” specific details or events related to her use and establishment of her private email and server.

Clinton’s excuse for several of her lapses in memory was that the events in question occurred directly her head injury, which left the Democrat nominee with a blood clot on the brain and a concussion.

So, let’s take a brief recounting of Hillary Clinton’s political career to see if it is even possible for her to be so naïve about the document classification process and for her not to have any functional knowledge of how to handle classified and sensitive information.

The Invisible (Female) Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

“It is disgraceful for any Islamic, national or independent list to scrap the names of the women. If they are not willing to recognize the woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women after they are elected? … I’m against the participation of women in this manner. Let men participate in the election alone.” — Nahed Abu Taima, Media Development Center at Bir Zeit University.

Dr. Walid Al-Qatati, a writer and analyst specializing in Islamic affairs, said that the move reminded him of wedding invitations that are sent out without naming the brides.

When Palestinian women carry out attacks against Israelis, Palestinian society glorifies them as heroes. Then the names and photos of these women are plastered across billboards. Yet it appears that when the women wish to work for life rather than for death, their identities are not fit for public consumption.

In a move that has outraged Palestinian women and various Palestinian factions, a number of Palestinian lists contesting the upcoming local elections, scheduled to take place on October 8, have decided to omit the names and photos of female candidates.

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

Critics have denounced the move as a “sign of retardation, extremism and bigotry.” Other Palestinians have gone so far as comparing the removal of the female candidates’ names and photos from the lists to the cruel pre-Islamic practice of infanticide (wa’d).

Iran: The Return of Ahmadinejad & Co. by Majid Rafizadeh

Iran’s Supreme Leader and the senior cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been vocally critical of the nuclear deal. They fear further diplomatic and political rapprochement between the US and Iran, now that they have already achieved their objectives of the lifting of the four major rounds of the UN Security Council’s sanctions.

After the nuclear deal was implemented, polls showed that 63% of Iranians expected to see improvements in the economy and living standards within a year. But currently, in a new poll, 74% of Iranians said there had been no economic improvements in the past year.

Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying he wants to “redefine revolutionary ideals” set up by the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appears to be launching a campaign to run in the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, in February, 2017.

Ahmadinejad was well-known for his incendiary and provocative speeches, which included denying the Holocaust. At the end of his presidential term, from 2005 to 2013, his approval rating was extremely low, and he managed to drive away most constituents across political spectrum, including the topmost hardline leaders. He also became the first Iranian president since 1979 to be summoned by the parliament (Majlis) to answer questions regarding his activities and policies.

After all of this, the common conception among politicians, scholars and policy analysts was that Ahmadinejad would never return to politics. It seemed that his retirement plan focused on founding a university and teaching, but his plan to open a university failed.

Despite his low popularity among people, however, the “principalists” (ultra-conservatives) were still on his side, due to his fierce anti-US, anti-Western and anti-Israel policies and rhetoric, as well as the fact that he remains a major figure in the coalition of several conservative groups, the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran.

After Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed him to the Expediency Council, Iran’s highest political arbitration body, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council (the supervisory body over the parliament and elections) and the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament). The Expediency Council is predominantly made up of Iran’s hardline clerics, and functions as an advisory institution to the Supreme Leader.

A History of ‘Evenhanded’ Failure Evelyn Gordon

Among those diplomats and journalists who don’t simply blame the Arab-Israeli conflict entirely on Israel, the preferred approach is “evenhandedness.” This approach, epitomized by the “cycle of violence” cliché, holds that both sides want peace and are equally to blame for its absence. Remarkably, this view has persisted despite decades of proving wrong in ways that hurt the very countries which espouse it – as demonstrated yet again by newly released documents from the Nixon Administration.

The documents, which Amir Oren reported this week in Haaretz, include redacted versions of the CIA’s daily presidential briefings on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The agency’s cluelessness is mind-blowing.

On October 5, 1973, one day before the war began, the CIA acknowledged that “The military exercises underway in Egypt seem to be on a larger scale and are being conducted more realistically than previous ones,” but nevertheless insisted that “they do not appear to be preparations for an offensive against Israel.” The agency even dismissed an obvious danger sign as a reasonable response to fears of Israeli aggression: “Cairo may have put its air defense and air forces on alert as a precaution against an Israeli reaction to the initial phase of the exercise.”

On October 6, just hours before the war began, the CIA’s briefing was similarly disconnected from reality:

Tension along Israel’s borders with Egypt and Syria has been heightened by a Soviet airlift that is in its second day. Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs seem bent on starting hostilities, but in this atmosphere the risk of clashes is greater than usual. … Both the Israelis and the Arabs are becoming increasingly concerned about their adversaries’ military activities, but neither side seems bent on starting hostilities … A military initiative at this time would make little sense for either Cairo or Damascus.

Once again, the agency seemed to view potential Israeli aggression as the main concern: “Syria’s cautious President [Hafez] Assad appears braced for a possible second blow from Israel rather than seeking revenge for his recent loss of 13 MIGs to Israeli fighters … Nevertheless, the Syrians’ fears could lead to a mobilization of their defenses, which in turn could alarm and galvanize the Israelis. Such a cycle of action and reaction would increase the risk of military clashes which neither side originally intended.”

And once again, it ignored clear danger signs, like the evacuation of Soviet dependents from Egypt and Syria. While admitting that this could be due to “fear of an outbreak of hostilities,” it optimistically suggested that instead, “The Soviets might be using the excuse of rising tensions to reduce their presence without annoying the Egyptians.”

Israeli filmmaker uninvited to campus conference over ‘political correctness and BDS’

The film was referred to by ‘The New York Times’ as “one of the first close-up view of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

Syracuse University has passed over formally inviting Israeli film director Shimon Dotan to their international film conference “The Place of Religion in Film.”
Dotan had previously been informally invited by one of the events organizers, William L. Blizek, according to The Atlantic. The film Dotan was due to show at the March 2017 conference was his feature-length documentary ‘The Settlers’ which chronicles the history of the settlements, the people who live there and the movement as a whole.

The film itself was referred to by The New York Times as “one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival (and was made with financial support from the Israeli network YES and from the European network ARTE, among others) and opened throughout Israel recently.

However, despite an invitation, and interest on the part of the filmmaker Dotan, he was uninvited to the event due to the “BDS faction on campus.”

The Syracuse University BDS faction made no known statements or threats to Dotan’s possible participation and were perhaps unaware of it all together.

A rejection email Dotan received from Professor Hamner of the Religion Department of Syracuse University stated that the group would make things unpleasant for the Israeli filmmaker and possibly damage the reputation and credibility of the organizers and the event.

The email added that they regretted not having the opportunity to see the film and as such they could not vouch for it.

The film has been highly rated among critics. It mainly focuses on the radical fringe settlers and, according to reviews, is perceived as showing settlers in a negative light.

Dotan said he wants people to understand the reality, in all its complexity. “I don’t think Israel faces a military threat, but I think it does face the threat of disintegration from within… I think there is a threat to democracy and to the moral fabric of the country… I want the film to present a dialogue with the settlers in a way that will enlighten people.”

EFRAIM KARSH :THE OSLO DISASTER

Prof. Efraim Karsh, the incoming director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, skewers the Oslo diplomatic process as “the starkest strategic blunder in Israel’s history” and as “one of the worst calamities ever to have afflicted Israelis and Palestinians.”
“Twenty three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn,” Karsh writes in this comprehensive study, “the Oslo ‘peace process’ has substantially worsened the position of both parties and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation ever more remote.”
“The process has led to establishment of an ineradicable terror entity on Israel’s doorstep, deepened Israel’s internal cleavages, destabilized its political system, and weakened its international standing.”
“It has been a disaster for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians too. It has brought about subjugation to corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes. These regimes have reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote.”
“This abject failure is a direct result of the Palestinian leadership’s perception of the process as a pathway not to a two-state solution – meaning Israel alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – but to the subversion of the State of Israel. They view Oslo not as a path to nation-building and state creation, but to the formation of a repressive terror entity that perpetuates conflict with Israel, while keeping its hapless constituents in constant and bewildered awe as Palestinian leaders line their pockets from the proceeds of this misery.”
Karsh details at length how the Oslo process has weakened Israel’s national security in several key respects.
On the strategic and military levels, it allowed the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop its strategic vision of transforming the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into terror hotbeds that would disrupt Israel’s way of life (to use Yasser Arafat’s words).